REPORT OF SURVEY ON THE ASSESSMENT OF ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN SELECT PUBLIC STRUCTURES IN LAGOS STATE
By
Omonijo Susan
and
Ajifolokun Yetunde
The mission of CLEEN Foundation is to
promote public safety, security and accessible
justice through empirical research, legislative
advocacy, demonstration programmes and
publications, in Partnership with government
and civil society
Content
Acknowledgement
CLEEN Foundation is grateful to all public institutions that opened their doors to receive our field researchers who went out to find how accessible their structures and services are to people living with disabilities. These institutions include; Federal High Court Ikeja, Lagos State Secretariat Alausa, General Hospital Ikeja, Lagos State House of Assembly, and Mr Biggs, Tantalizer and Chicken Republic all in Ojodu. To the management and staff of these institutions we say thank you. Special thanks also go to the staff and students of Westlie School for the Hearing Impaired, Bethsedal Home for the Blind, Modupe Cole Memorial School for Children with Disabilities, for responding to the questionnaires.
We immensely thank all those who found time within their tight schedules to participate in the survey. Lastly we thank the able interns of CLEEN Foundation Susan Omonijo and Yetunde Ajifolokun who conducted the pilot project. Many thanks also go to Mr David Anyaele of Center for Citizens with Disabilities for insightful comments and Dr Eban Ebai, Director of Programs at CLEEN for supervising the project.
Preface
Recent decades have witnessed considerable improvement in the way persons with disabilities are viewed in the United States and other Western nations. Concerns for social justice, including recognition of equal rights and provision of equal opportunity, spirited by the success of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, have increased awareness of the needs and abilities of individuals with physical, sensory, or cognitive disabilities. The result has been the passage of significant legislation related to education and employment, such as The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and The Americans with Disabilities Act. In the absence of reasonable accommodations required by such laws, the ability of affected individuals to participate fully in society would remain limited.
While efforts to create an inclusive society are ongoing in the West, in Africa, due to cultural beliefs and attitudes persons with disabilities continue to be devalued, dehumanized, and rejected. This is so, despite many of these nations having assented to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
In Nigeria, disabilities accessibility of public and private structures has not been a priority to both policy makers and architects that design the structures. Irrespective of the fact that Nigeria joined 97 other countries in declaring support for disability rights on Friday, 24thSeptember 2008, by signing both the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its optional protocol, she has not enacted a domestic act on disability rights. In the shelves of the Legislature lies a draft bill awaiting presidential assent to pass it in to law. General public awareness campaigns as well as academic studies in the area of disability rights are low with many treating disable people with reckless abandon and disdain.
It is against this back drop that CLEEN Foundation designed this pilot survey in select public structures in Lagos state, to look at how accessible the buildings, their environment and their services are to people living with disabilities as a way to ignite awareness and to cause policy makers to take necessary action. The survey also inquires whether the respondents were aware of the existence of any law(s) and any sensitisation programs by the Lagos state government on the respect of the rights of people living with disabilities. The survey focused on those on wheelchairs, visually impaired as well as on those with hearing and speaking disabilities.
The findings of the survey offer a working tool to policy makers, legislature and the civil society as they portray how much the rights of people living with disability have been neglected both in the structural designs of the building and surrounding environment as well as in the provision of disability friendly services in the public structures under study in Lagos State.
Eban Ebai, PhD
Deputy Director Programs
CLEEN Foundation
Background
The Social integration of people with disabilities has become one of the key priorities of the international community during the past decade.According to the United Nations Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, (UNSREOPD);The term “Disability” summarizes a great number of different functional limitations occurring in any population, this include disabled by physical, intellectual or sensory impairment, medical conditions or mental illness. Such impairments, conditions or illnesses may be permanent or temporary in nature.
The World health Organization in 1990 began a process of examining their international classification of impairment, disability and handicap (ICIDH), at the end of the exercise; they produced a final document, ‘the International Classification of Functioning (ICF)” which takes a very strong approach to the social model of disabilities as against the medical model being used before. The ICF defines disability as the outcome of the interaction between a person with impairment and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders the full and effective participation in the society on an equal basis with others. This definition was also endorsed by United Nation Convention on the Right of People with Disabilities.
Statistics of the 2006 National Population Census has show that in Lagos State alone, out of about a population of twenty million, people living with disabilities are over two million, and according to the World Health Organization (WHO 2005), it was estimated that a total of 600 million individuals in Sub- Saharan African are living with disabilities. Now, there is no doubt that disability should not be considered through a medical model alone, but also as a broad human rights issue and a matter of law. With this understanding, it has become crucial to ensure that this group has equal access to education, employment and all social services and amenities.
In view of this, the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13th December 2006 and following ratification by the 20th party, it came into force on 3rd May 2008. The convention clearly stipulates that all people in the world are equal and have the same rights; and that people with disabilities must enjoy the same rights and must not be discriminated against. Implementing Disability Rights is linked to Community Based Rehabilitation which is a strategy within the general community development for rehabilitation, equalization of opportunities, poverty reduction and social inclusion of all people with disabilities to participate in all aspects of cultural life.
However, in most part of the world, Africa inclusive, those with disabilities continue to confront an uncaring society. When they approach members of the public for help in starting market, gardening, dressmaking or music projects, they are regarded as a nuisance. The general feeling is that the only places for a person with disabilities are in the street or in front of a church, begging. The situation is even worse in rural areas, where children with disabilities are usually confined to the house because of long-held traditional beliefs that they are curses from God. Most of the obstacles facing people with disabilities involve public amenities, education and information, access to public structures, transport, and public gatherings.
Great efforts have been made in the provision of services as well as in the structuring of public buildings, offices, stadiums and many other public utilities to accommodate people living with physical disabilities. These notable efforts can be seen in countries such as Australia where the Australian Human Rights Commission and Australian Building Code conducted the Disability Standards for Premises, United Kingdom enacted the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 now replaced and repealed by the Equality Act 2010 and the Building Act 2004, also in United State of America, The Americans with disability Act [ADA], Rehabilitation Act 1973 and The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] were all put in place to give equal rights to people living with disabilities.
In Africa generally and in Nigeria in particular, disabilities accessibility of public and private structures has not been a priority to both policy makers and architects that design the structures. Irrespective of the fact that Nigeria joined 97 other countries in declaring support for disability rights on Friday, 24thSeptember 2008, by signing both the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its optional protocol, she has not enacted a domestic act on disability rights. In the shelves of the Legislature lies a draft bill seeking the promulgation of a law to make public buildings disability-friendly. This draft bill was adopted at the 13th Council Meeting of the National Council on Women Affairs and Social Development held February 2011. Although the bill has now been passed and harmonised by both chambers, it still await presidential assent.
General public awareness campaigns as well as academic studies in the area of disability rights are low with many treating disable people with reckless abandon and disdain. However, a study titled: “Wheelchair Accessibility of Public Buildings in Ibadan” has been conducted to determine how state building make provisions for people on wheelchair to gain accessibility. This study, good as it may, is limited in scope and content for it was based only on people in wheelchair living in public building in Ibadan. In order to properly address rights of disabilities as it relates to access to public structures, option have been to look at physical access as well as access to the service delivery.
Thus, this pilot survey, carried out in seven public structures in Lagos state, looked at how accessible the buildings, their environment and their services are to people living with disabilities. The survey also inquired whether the respondent were aware of the existence of any law(s) and any sensitisation programs by the Lagos state government on the respect of the rights of people living with disabilities. The survey focused on those on wheelchairs, visually impaired as well as on those with hearing and speaking disabilities. The buildings under survey included; Federal High Court Ikeja, Lagos state Secretariat Alausa, General Hospital Ikeja, Lagos State House of Assembly, and Mr Biggs, Tantalizer and Chicken Republic all in Ojodu.
The study measured the doorway width, height of thresholds and steps; width of routes and grades of ramps, car packs, pedestrian paths, services deliveries and toilets facilities of these structures were also inspected to see how accessible they were to people with physical disabilities.
The method of collecting data was through face-to-face interview using a set of questionnaire containing questions that cover all major aspects of accessibilities. Respondents were Nigerians, male and female and most of them adults, spanning through people with and without disabilities.
A total of 100 respondents were covered in the survey. The questionnaires were completed in English language whereas translations in Pidgin English and Yoruba were provided, if demanded.
Percentage of Respondents in Different Locations
The respondents were selected at random from seven locations namely, Alausa Secretariat with 24% of the total number of the respondents being the highest followed by Wesley School for the hearing impaired with 17%, Bethesda Home for the Blind, Federal High Court and Lagos State Teaching Hospital with 14% each and Modupe Cole Memorial School for the Mental and Physically Challenged as well as Eateries with 11% and 6%respectively.
Graph 01: % of Respondents in Location of interview
Gender Disaggregation of Respondents
In a total of 100 Nigerians that participated in the survey, 56% of respondents were male while 44% were female as illustrated in the chart below. It is important to note that the imbalanced in gender ratio is due to the fact that majority of the respondents at the locations of interviews were male given that more men go out to work in public building than women.
Graph 02: Respondents` gender
Age Desegregation of Respondents
From the graph below, the least number of respondents were between 0-17 years representing 3% of the total respondents, respondents above the age of 50 years followed with 13%. However, respondents between the ages of 18-30 years formed 34% while, the highest number of respondent fell between the ages of 31-40 years representing 50% of the total respondents. Therefore, a larger percentage of the total respondents were adults.
Graph 03: Age Desegregation of respondents
Occupation of Respondent
The professions of respondents ranged from civil servant to gardener; with the highest percentage of respondents being civil servant with 26%, followed by teachers 25%, student 13%, artisans 8% f, 7% drivers, 6% for entrepreneur, 4% were working in the printing press, another 4% also work as architects while 3% and 2% are gardeners and engineers respectively.
Respondents with or without Disabilities
The survey questionnaires were responded by both people with and without disabilities. A total of 70% of the respondents identified themselves as persons without any form of disabilities while 30% indicated that they do have one form of disability or another. Furthermore, the nature of the disability was specified as represented in the chart below.
Graph 04: Nature of Disabilities
Drawing from the analysis of the chart above, 40% of the respondents with disability were blind or partially sighted, 30% were hard of hearing or hearing impaired, 16.7% picked other forms of disabilities not specified and 13.3% of them are having mobility or physical disabilities.
After having conducted the pilot as stated above a number of findings were noted.
Major Findings
At the end of the exercise, the major findings of the survey are presented in the sections below.
I. Legislation and Disabilities
The respondents were asked if they are aware of any Lagos State law protecting the rights of the people living with disabilities in Lagos State.33% of the respondents said that there are no laws in Lagos State protecting the interest of the people living with disabilities, 26% said that they do not know if any such law existed or not and 41% affirmed that such laws actually exist as represented in the graph below. Thus combining the total percentage of those respondents that said there are no laws and those that are not sure, one would note that a total of 59% of respondents are not aware of the existence of state laws on disability irrespective of the fact that there is an existing bill on disability signed by the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) establishing the Office of Disability Affairs in 2010 and the provision of an Office of Public Private Partnership (PPP) in 2011. It is therefore recommended that an aggressive public sensitization of the existence of such laws and indeed the respect for the rights of people living with disability should be carried out in the state using all available forms of publicity, including the radio, television and print media.
Graph 0.5Lagos State laws protecting the Right of People Living with Disabled
i. Sensitisation on the Respect of the Rights of People Living with Disabilities.
Another question that was asked was that if the respondents are aware of any disability issue and any public sensitization to foster the respect for the rights of people living with disabilities in Lagos State. And drawing from the analysis of the results from the survey, the highest percentage of the respondents with 43% affirmed that they are not aware of any such sensitizations or issues, 32% said that they are aware and 25% have no idea at all. The result is pictographically represented below.
Graph 06: Awareness of disability issues and public sensitization in Lagos State
From the chart above, one can deduce that though awareness campaigns and sensitizations are on-going, on the rights of the people with disabilities in Lagos State, more is be done to ensure that people are aware of disability’s rights and interests and the rights are duly protected.
ii. Consideration for the Disabled When Designing Public Building
The survey set to find out the opinions of the respondents on the level of considerations given to people with disabilities, when the construction projects are being planned and when making accessibility laws. It was realised that more than half of the respondents, 53% said no consideration is given to them in both cases, and 42% said just a little is being done about that and 5% held that a lot of considerations is given to the disabled both when making accessibility laws as well as when construction projects are planned. See the cart 07 below.
Graph 07: Consideration for the disabled when making accessibility decisions in public buildings
iii. Government’s Efforts in making streets and other structures accessible to people with disabilities.
From the graph below, the respondents generally with 48% each felt that Lagos State Government is doing just a little in making the streets and other buildings friendly to people with disabilities. 41% and 36%respectivelty felt that the Government is doing a lot while 11% and 16% of the respondents felt the Government is doing nothing at all.
Graph 08: Government performance in making physical environment accessible
II Assistive Devices
Referring to the disability access to assistive devices (such as pair of glasses, wheelchair,Braille and artificial limbs.) in Lagos State, the majority of respondents’, 56.0% have the impression that the state government or local authority (or other stakeholders) are doing something to facilitate the personal mobility of disabled persons, while 44.0% does not.
Graph 09: Disability access:
i. Provision of assistive devices
As shown on the graph below, 58.9% of the respondents of the survey experienced a free provision of assistive devices in comparison to the minority of 41.1% who observed that devices were provided at an affordable cost.
Graph 10: Costs of assistive devices
III Mobility
i. Mobility training
Since mobility is a precondition to participate in all aspects of cultural and social life, it is important to know if training in mobility skills if given to people with disabilities as well as to specialist staff working with persons with disabilities. Majority of the respondents 49.5% said training in mobility skill is only made available sometimes, 34.3% said there is none at all while, the 16.2% held that training in mobility skill is made available all the time. This can be seen in the graph below.
Graph 11: Training in mobility skills.
ii. Disability transport system
As analysed from the survey results, the availability of appropriate disability transport is experienced as poor. While 63.0% of the respondents consider the availability as inadequate, only 23.0% think disability transport system as being available.
Graph 12: Availability of disability transport
IV. Infrastructural Services
i. Provision of Adequate Ramps and Designated Car Park Areas for the disabled
The provision of ramps and designated car park areas for people with physical disabilities is not only an integral part for a safe and secured transport system but also an aspect of the respect of the right of people living with disabilities. From the analysis of the survey, the responses reveal that 57% of the respondents said that there are no provisions for ramps at all in most of the public buildings in Lagos State, 11,2% said there are ramps while, 25% do not know if they are or not. And in the case of special car parks for people with disability, majority (74%) said there are none, 12% said there are and 14% had no answer. Of the 12% who acknowledge the presence of designated space in car parks for people living with disabilities all said these areas are never respected by drivers and other road users. They suggested that huge charges should be applied as punishment to drivers that would not respect designated space for people living with disabilities in the car parks
Table 1: ramps and car parks around public buildings.
Provision of ramps % | Special car parks % | |
No | 57.8 | 74 |
Yes | 11.2 | 12 |
I don’t know | 25.3 | 14 |
The only place where researchers saw ramps was at Modupe cole out of the seven locations visited
ii. Provision of lifts in public buildings
The respondents were further asked if there were lifts in public buildings to meet the needs of those who cannot use the steps due to disabilities and the responses can be seen in the char below.
Graph 13: Provision of lifts in public buildings.
From the graph above, half of the respondent said there are no provisions for lifts in most of the select public buildings visited in Lagos State, 21% said there are, 15% said not at all and 14% said they did not know if there are lifts in public buildings or not. Also the researchers noticed that only Alausa secretariat had provisions for lifts among the places inspected.
Figue 1 :Lift of one of the ministries at Alausa secretariat Ikeja
iii. Provision of Adequate Toilet Facilities
Other essential facilities that need to be improved upon in all public structures surveyed are the toilets facilities, from the data gathered, 74% of the total respondents were of the opinion that public toilets are not adequately designed to meet the needs of people living with disabilities, 19% said they are partly designed while 7% said they are adequately designed. Also from the observations of the researchers, all the toilets inspected at places visited were not provided with adequate spacing and grab bars some were with colour contrasts. See details in the table 2 and figure 1 below.
Table 2: adequate toilet facilities.
values | % |
Not adequately designed | 74 |
Partly designed | 19 |
Adequately designed | 7 |
Figue 2: Public toilet at the secretsriat with colour contrast but without adequate spacing and grab bars
IV. Community support services
When asked about community support services from their state government or local authorities (or other stakeholders) for people with disabilities, only 6.0% of the respondents affirmed that people with disabilities get community support service in the form of personal assistance and other in-house services, 30% felt they do not get such services at all while the highest percentage of the respondents with 64% said such services is given only sometimes. Also in the area of services to prevent isolation and segregation from the community, 40% said there is none at all, 55% said such services are available only sometimes and only 5% said people with disabilities get such services all the time. See illustrations in the graphs below.
Graph 15: Community support services to improve the daily life of disabled people
Graph 16: Community support services to prevent isolation.
V. Information and Education
Access to information and education is a universal Human Right, equally valid for people with disabilities as stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities
i. Accessible information for people with disabilities
The following chart illustration shows how far persons with disabilities are been provided with suitable access to information by the local authority (and other stakeholders).
Graph 17: Access to adequate information for disabled persons
Information on Braille, sign language, argumentative or other forms of accessible information and communication for people with disabilities were mostly observed to be provided only sometimes based on the views of the respondents as indicated by the green bars on the graph above, the red bars indicate that they are not provided at all and the blue bars on the graph indicate that these various forms of information are available all the time.
Figure 3: Sign language poster at Westlie School for the Gearing impaired
ii. Access to documentation
The respondents were asked if adequate information and documentations are made accessible to people with disabilities according to their needs in these selected public buildings in Lagos State. The highest percentage of the respondents said in most cases that just a little measure are put in place to ensure that people with disabilities have access to adequate information and documentation in Lagos State. 41% of the respondents said that visually impaired people has a little access to information and documentation, 51% said they do not have access at all and 8% said they do not have access, for hearing and visual impaired people, 45% felt they do not have access at all, 40% said they have just a little and 15% said these people has a lot of access to information and documentation. For those who are hard of hearing, 44% of the respondents felt that they do not have any access at all, 48% said they have just a little and 8% said a lot. For intellectual disability, with 52% said they have access to information and documentation, 39% felt they do not have at all and 9% felt they have access all the time and for people with reading and writing difficulty. Respondents with 61% said these people have just a little access, 53% said they do not have at all and just 6% felt they have access to information all the time.
Graph 18: Adequate access to documentation for different forms of disabilities
iii. The use of disability means of accessing information by Individuals without disabilities.
According to the survey results, the chat below represents respondent’s view on the use of specifically designed mode of information by others without disabilities. The red bars indicate that the various modes of alternative information are not being used at all by individuals without disabilities; the green bars indicate that they are only being used sometimes while the blue bars showed that they are being used all the time by others that are not disabled.
Graph 19: Use of alternative information by Individuals without disabilities
iv. Compulsory education for children with disabilities
In other to ensure an equal access to education for both children with disabilities as well as those without disabilities it is important to focus on free and compulsory primary and secondary education for them. The question now is, do these children have access to this free and compulsory education? Majority of the respondents; 55% said no, 20% do not know and 25% said yes that free and compulsory education is available to these children.
Graph 20: Differences on education access between children with and without disabilities
v. Adaption of local schools to the need of students with disabilities
The respondents were asked if local schools are accessible and adapted to the needs of children with disabilities and if yes, how? According to the analysis of the survey, 59.0% said yes, while 41.0% of the respondents said no.
Pointing out the possible ways of adaptation of local schools to the needs of students with disabilities, respondents with 52.7 observed that accessible premises are made available sometimes, 38.2 said all the time and 9.1% said not at all, for assistive devices, 62.5% felt they are accessible sometimes, 25% said they are accessible all the time and 12.5% are of the view that they are not available in local schools at all. Respondents with 64.8% felt that individualized programmes are made available only sometimes, 28.6% said all the time and 7.1% said not at all. For special classes, 35.7% of the respondents said they are not provided at all, 48.2% said they are provided sometimes and 16.1% said they are available all the time. Sign language is provided sometimes according to the view of 60.7% of the respondents, 25.2% said all the time and 16.1% said not at all. Lastly, 56.4% said Braille is provided sometimes, 12.7% said all the time and 30.9% indicated not at all. See illustration in the graph below.
Graph 21: Ways of adaption to the needs of disabled student
.
vi. Implementation of measures to monitor the lives of people living with disabilities
More than half of the respondents (63.3%) felt that there are measures put in place in Lagos state to monitor the lives of people living with disabilities, while 36.7% said there are no measures at all. However, having seen from this result, the question that is posed is; are the measures adequately implemented? A great number of the respondents (61.7%) were of the opinion that these measures are only partly implemented, 13.3% each went for implemented and not implemented while only 11.7% said these measures are adequately implemented.
Graph 22: Level of implementation of measures
Recommendations
1. We recommend that the Government, through the Ministry of Information, with the assistance of Civil Society Organizations must design programs to augment the Public’s awareness about the Lagos State Special People’s Law.
2. The government should also ensure that there is strict compliance in providing people with disability with facilities that are friendly as provided by the law.
3. We also wish to recommend that the State should create interactive forums such as conferences on subjects related to the rights of persons with disabilities to enhance sensitisation of the society for a better integration of people with disabilities can be reached.
4. Public service administrators should improve on their ways of passing information about their services across to the general public, bearing in mind the needs of people living with disabilities to prevent discriminations.
5. From the survey reports it would be noted that individuals who are not disabled are not encouraged to learn and make use of disability means of communication, hence we would like to suggest that these should be considered and can also be included in primary and secondary schools’ syllabus.
6. Architectural barriers should be put away, as public buildings should be made accessible to people with disabilities. Ramps, pedestrian bridges, and special boardwalks to enable people on wheelchairs move freely on the streets, lifts and other gadgets should also be provided.
7. Government should also ensure that people with disabilities have the right to free and compulsory education which will enable them to develop their capabilities and skills to the maximum, and which will hasten the process of their social integration or reintegration.
8. The state Government should also make provisions for assistive devices for people living with disabilities, if not totally free but at avoidable prices,
9. Employment policies of the State also have to give adequate considerations to competent people with disabilities as provided by the law.
10. Disability friendly transport facilities should be provided in all public transport services so as to give room for adequate accessibility to people with disabilities.
11. Media organizations should also try to include disability related issues in their programmes to enhance public awareness and sensitisation on the issues of disability.
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